Cave Story +

Cave Story (Doukutsu Monogatari) is a game sometimes hailed as the Indie of All Indies. It’s a freeware title developed by Pixel over the course of five years. After its 2004 release the game gained traction and was translated into English by Aeon Genesis. In 2010 an updated version of the game with new graphics and music and multiple difficulty levels was localized and released as Cave Story +.

Perhaps because of it’s Indie street cred, Cave Story has become fodder for Troo Gamers, a phenomenon demonstrated by Destructoid’s dual essays, Why Cave Story is the Greatest Game Ever and Why Cave Story is the Worst Game Ever. The latter is a ham-fisted satirical essay that posits players who dislike Cave Story are fuckboys. Elitism: it isn’t just for AAAs.

Cave Story has an interesting system where weapons gain power as the player grabs EXP crystals from fallen enemies and lose power when the player takes damage. The story is parceled out in an interesting way, the characters are fun (Balrog has earned avatar status, if that means anything), and there are multiple endings. The path to the secret true ending is convoluted and basically impossible without a walkthrough (less than 1% have earned the achievement). The game also has a secret final level, dubbed “Hell” by fans, for the enthusiast.

Cave Story is obviously a labor of love and it’s appeal to seasoned gamers in particular is understandable. On it’s face, however, it’s an average metroidvania with retro design choices to go along with the retro vibe. It has what I call the “asswhip factor,” which means difficulty is manufactured by those clumsy tools of yesteryear: enemy density, play control limitations, and repetition. The level design is fairly linear for the most part and there are manufactured tasks that necessitate retreading the same areas, which is my biggest criticism, as this repetition can make those sections of the game feel like a slog. The worst offender is a quest in the Sand Zone. The player must find 5 lost dogs and can only carry 1 dog at a time. The player must fully traverse an area heavily infested with enemies twice (one of the dogs is near the exit, which the player must return to after the quest is finished) in addition to a number of partial traversals. There is nothing particularly fun or engaging about this back and forth and it lacks that magical, “Aha!” metroidvania moment where the player realizes they should backtrack because they have unlocked an ability that will allow them to access a previously inaccessible area.

As always, the cheevos tell their story. 78% of players try the game but only 54% venture on to the early first-boss encounter. 11 percent get the bad ending and 13 percent continue on through the last level to get the normal or good endings. CS+ awards cheevos for every boss battle and weapon acquisition, so one can observe player attrition of 3 to 5% increments between milestones. I think part of this can be attributed to CS’s difficulty curve and part of it is the game is somewhat average so when things get sloggy people simply abandon it.

I like and appreciate Cave Story, but I can see many reasons why others might not, and I’m not going to pretend that my enjoyment somehow marks my tastes as refined. I wouldn’t recommend it as a metroidvania; challenging, polished games like Guacamelee! do a much better job of showcasing the genre’s strengths. But I think as an example of what a one-man team can accomplish it’s worth a play even to those with only a casual interest, and the free version is still available, though it lacks the different difficulty modes.